[Nate Hanson]

What about Trapcode’s Stroke? Can it make anything like that?

[Nate Hanson]

That looks like the CC Ripple Pulse effect. It’s a weird effect to use. You have to key frame the Pulse Level property for it to show up.

Set the property key frame where you want the pulse to begin, then set another key frame with a different value right after the first one, then you’ll see the pulse take shape.

I think you could achieve this look with other effects. Maybe a the CC Glass effect applied to an animated mask moving out from center.

Nate

[Nate Hanson]

There is an effect called (strangely enough) Separate X, Y, Z. It does exactly that. Once the effect is applied, you can animate each axis individually without the problems you were having earlier. I know the Andrew Kramer tutorials cover this at some point, but it wasn’t in the one you mentioned.

Hope that helps!

Nate

[Nate Hanson]

I was able to create one of those animated flourishes from scratch. I used Illustrator to design the flourish (there is a spiral tool that was helpful). I made the flourish white on a black background.

In After Effects, I imported the flourish image and used a stroke effect to “reveal original” so that the flourish animated into existence. It turned out pretty decent.

I was able to add a nice glow effect and make multiple copies of the animated flourish and the result looked similar to some of his Twister demonstrations. I think his were animated more smoothly, and I think his were a higher resolution…but mine didn’t cost me a thing and I’m pretty sure I could improve mine if I tried again.

Watch Kramer’s tutorial on writing a signature on the screen. He explains the stroke effect in that one: https://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials.html?id=25

Hope that helps!

Nate

[Nate Hanson]

You could use a mask to reveal the shape. Start out with the mask roughly the shape of the smoke, but with the opacity turned down to zero. As the smoke begins to fade, turn up the opacity of the mask. The mask shape could also be animated to spread out and up over time. You probably will need to feather the mask so that it blends better with the smoke.

I’m a rookie and I don’t know how a mask will interact with a matte situation. I don’t know if the mask would need its own layer or if you could apply it to the matte. Anyway, just a thought.

Nate

[Nate Hanson]

I think this tutorial explains exactly what you need to do. He applies a mask to an actor’s face and then gets the mask to stay “on” the face throughout the clip, even with shaky camera moves.

https://library.creativecow.net/articles/kramer_andrew/Demon_Face_Warp.php

Hope it helps!

Nate

[Nate Hanson]

Thanks for the help, Steve. You were actually correct in the earlier post when you asked if my text layer was offset. It was. I just didn’t realize I had moved it.

As for the weird numbers (-.10, .10) that I was getting…those were from a particle effect control point I was trying to add. I just confused myself and thought it was the flare’s property.

The effect now works exactly as I hoped it would! Thanks again for helping me figure it out!

Nate

[Nate Hanson]

Wow, I’ve been working on that exact effect and I’ve had similar problems. I was able to get some video clips to revolve around a planet, but I couldn’t bend them. I attached each clip to a null object centered on the planet, then rotated the Null in 3D space.

It was suggested to me to use the CC Cylinder effect to make them curve. I couldn’t get it to work right though. It doesn’t curve them in 3D space, it just creates a flat layer that looks curved. If you weren’t doing any camera moves, I suppose you could use the cylinder tool and then mask out the part where it goes behind the object in the center (in my case, a planet). But I wanted to move all around the objects.

I got it to work without curved screens, but I never could figure that part out. Hopefully somebody has a good solution because I’d love to finish that effect!

Nate

[Nate Hanson]

The problem seems to be with the range of numbers the two properties are operating on. At the start point of my animation the numbers look like this:

Flare Center
x: -.10
y: .10

Path (from stroke effect)
x: 129
Y: 283

So the numbers aren’t on the same scale. I moved stuff around and sort of forced it to line up, but I did it the hard way. How would I write an expression to compensate for this? Could I do it using the linear function?

Linear(-.10, .10, 129, 283)

or something like that?

Nate

[Nate Hanson]

Thanks, Steve! I swear I tried that…but I must have done something wrong when I did.

So it basically works now. The only problem is that flare follows the path about an inch above where the text is appearing. My quick fix was to just move the position of the flare’s layer down until it lined up with the text. Normally this would cause a problem with the edge of the layer cutting off some of the flare effect – but I’m zooming in on this scene so that will be out of frame.

So the question is: Why does the path data offset the flare’s center? Is there a better way to realign the flare center with the text?

Thanks for your help!

Nate